Crackpot Times

Writing has got me into trouble a few times in my life. All my troubles so far I brought on myself in my first twenty-five years, which is also logical, since until then I lived under an undemocratic, authoritarian regime. In my first years at grammar school, my father was summoned to the school because of my editorship of the school magazine. “They are always criticizing something and wanting to change it,” the headmistress complained. In my final year, an offended and furious teacher demanded not only educational measures but also punishment along political lines because of my critical writing. When I wrote for Tribuna and sold banned copies on the streets of Ljubljana, plainclothes police officers lurked around me. Over the next few decades I had less trouble with interventions of this kind, until recently, when a complaint about my writing and public appearances apparently made its way from Ljubljana to Strasbourg. I am not, of course, talking about criticism, which is always welcome. There is no democracy without a clash of different opinions, including between dissenters and those who dissent from the dissenters, but democracy cannot tolerate authoritarian dictate and censorship by the thoughtless. In all this, I stress the word apparently, since until I have something in black and white, I want to believe it is just a slip or a misunderstanding. If I am wrong, I will gladly apologize.

For many years I have been writing and speaking in the Slovenian media about issues that are of key importance for Slovenia today. I am far from the only one in Slovenia who knows something about European integration and cooperation, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, but after almost three decades of working professionally on these issues—in an international environment—I am certainly among those who know something about these subjects. I cannot imagine that anyone could be such a crackpot as to want to shut me up simply because they disagree with my opinion. It is true, though, that we live in rather crackpot times.

Misunderstanding or not, let me say straight away that I have no intention of stopping writing. My professional path grew out of my personal beliefs and values. I also write because I am a patriot and a convinced European, and I care what happens to my homeland and to Europe. If you are truly committed to democratic values, you cannot defend them only on weekdays from nine to five, as the Americans say. When I joined the Council of Europe almost twenty-six years ago, I took an oath that I would be guided in my work solely by professionalism and loyalty to the organization and its values. I gave that word, and I keep that word.

The Council of Europe is not, of course, a debating club where anyone can say and do whatever comes into their head. We are an intergovernmental organization with important tasks and powers. There are rules and limits on who may speak on behalf of the organization and when. I often represent the organization and its positions, but exclusively in areas within my remit. Many Slovenian journalists who have in the past asked me for an official response on questions outside my competence can testify to that. Respecting these rules is required by the professionalism mentioned in the oath. Public communication in a personal capacity is different. Since the Council of Europe is a serious and respected institution, there are rules for such cases too. Publishing articles requires authorization, and I have it for my columns. The most important obligation for every staff member, however, whether speaking personally or representing the organization, is the second part of the oath, which commits us to loyalty to the values of European cooperation, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. These were also the subjects I was asked to write about for Večer years ago. Until recently, these issues were of little interest to most people. Human rights, blah, blah; democracy, blah, blah; rule of law, blah, blah. Yawn. Why write about it at all, since we’re all in favor? Well, today we evidently no longer are. That is probably why my writing has become disturbing to some. Since I have not changed my views since they got me into trouble in my youth, someone else evidently must have changed theirs.

On shared European civilizational values, post-war politicians in the West—incidentally, almost exclusively from Christian Democratic and conservative parties—laid the foundations for post-war reconstruction and lasting peace in Europe. The victory of these values after the fall of the Berlin Wall ended, at least for a while, the ideological division of the European continent. On the values of European integration we won an independent and democratic Slovenia, and we wrote these values into our Constitution and protected them there. Today some want to convince us that they are unpatriotic. Only a few years ago it would have been hard to imagine any serious politician in Europe talking about “some kind of” or even “invented” European values. Ladies and gentlemen, if we have a problem, I am not the cause.

Whereas until yesterday there was a broad political and social consensus on fundamental European values in most European countries, including Slovenia, among all political groupings except the extreme ones, today some want to politicize and relativize these values and present them as just one option among others. This is, of course, no accident. Democratic principles and the rule of law are not a set of loose ethical aspirations but an elaborate system of rules and procedures which, through laws and the constitution, protect society and individuals against abuse of power by the authorities and allow voters, at regular intervals, to decide freely who will lead them. In populist discourse, European values are therefore increasingly presented as a conspiracy of alienated Eurocratic elites seeking to use them to deprive the little man of the right to hate whomever his heart desires and tradition commands. Even funnier is the claim that European democratic values are a political program of the left, which uses them to maintain continuity with the communist past. This is, of course, completely daft. The thesis that people who advocate European democratic values, human rights and the rule of law are by default extreme leftists can only be the product of a pathological mentality for which everything slightly to the left of the far right is communism.

We also increasingly hear reproaches that EU membership and the obligations that come with it threaten national sovereignty. Sovereignty is a word that tickles many people’s tummies, although it has very different meanings in different contexts. In sport, for example, commentators like to talk about sovereign victories. From international law textbooks we learned during our studies that sovereignty is the power of a state to exercise authority effectively on its territory. In this respect, the thesis that EU membership threatens national sovereignty in today’s world stands on rather shaky legs. In facing global economic, security, technological and other challenges, European states can, as a rule, exercise their sovereign authority and influence more effectively within the European Union than they could alone. This is especially true of states of our size and relative influence. Provided we approach membership smartly, responsibly, strategically and confidently, which we have not always done very well in the past. Without the support, security and influence made possible by integration with European partners, we would quickly be easy prey for bigger, stronger and more ruthless players. Co-decision allows far greater sovereignty than being unable to influence one’s own fate in practice. But sovereignty also has a third, more sinister interpretation, elaborated by Hitler’s court jurist Carl Schmitt. For him, sovereignty was the power of the ruler to decide on the state of exception and single-handedly suspend the validity of all legal norms. The sovereign is the one who has the power to place himself above the law and do as he pleases. In the name of the people, of course. We are not there yet, and I hope we never will be. Surely no one is such a crackpot as to want to separate us from Europe and its values thirty years after we won an independent state and established democracy. Although…